Although digitisation offers numerous opportunities for rural areas, they still lag behind cities in terms of access and adoption of Internet-based services. This divide is the result of multiple market failures in both the demand and supply of broadband access, which have been addressed through public, private and community-led initiatives. Based on interviews and ethnographic analysis, this paper explores how community networks and public-private partnerships have contributed to promoting the delivery and adoption of superfast broadband across the rural UK. The case study analysis compares the outcomes of each model, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. Although expanding the coverage of superfast broadband across the county, the public-private partnership did not solve the access divide afflicting the hardest-to-reach areas. Some of the latter were served by the community network, which relied on volunteers and demand aggregation to reduce the cost of fibre rollout. The scalability of this approach, however, has yet to be demonstrated. On the demand side, both initiatives achieved a high take-up proving that the rural ‘adoption’ divide has decreased over the years. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to ensure that rural communities and businesses are able to leverage the benefits deriving from superfast broadband.

尽管数字化为农村地区提供了许多机会，但在接入和采用基于互联网的服务方面仍落后于城市。这种鸿沟是宽带接入需求和供应方面多次市场失灵的结果，这些问题已通过公共、私人和社区主导的举措得到解决。基于访谈和人种学分析，本文探讨了社区网络和公私合作伙伴关系如何促进在英国农村地区提供和采用超高速宽带。案例研究分析比较了每个模型的结果，突出了它们的优点和缺点。尽管扩大了全县超高速宽带的覆盖范围，但公私合作并没有解决影响最难到达地区的接入鸿沟。后者部分由社区网络服务，依靠志愿者和需求聚合来降低光纤部署成本。然而，这种方法的可扩展性还有待证明。在需求方面，这两项举措都取得了很高的采用率，证明多年来农村“采用”鸿沟已经缩小。然而，还需要做更多的工作来确保农村社区和企业能够利用超高速宽带带来的好处。